China has announced a 7.1% increase in its defence budget for 2023 boosting spending by $15bn to $225bn. As always, a lot of the coverage tends to be biased one way or the other so here’s an attempt at some balanced analysis 1/ First of all the 2023 budget is completely in line with recent trends. Gone are the days of double-digit increases. Growth has been around 7% over the last five years and will likely stay around that level for the foreseeable future. 2/

(1/10) Plenty of great stuff being written on #China's new defence white paper but I want to draw attention to one specific table on defence spending included in the Chinese language version. That one table provides more insight into defence spending than we've had since 2013. (2/10) The key here is that it shows the functional breakdown of Chinese defence spending. It shows how much of the budget is spent on the three categories that make up Chinese military spending: personnel, training and sustainment, and equipment. Here's the table translated.